22/05/2007

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Süddeutsche Zeitung 22.05.2007

Tobias Kniebe has seen the first serious contender for the Golden Palm, Ulrich Seidl's "Import/Export". "Seidl's last feature film 'Hundstage' caused a sensation at the Venice Film Festival in 2001. That was six years ago, but that's simply how long it takes to come up with a true Seidl creation. The lay actors have a screen presence that will take your breath away. The absurd locations are taken from real life and the director, according to his long-established moral code, hasn't changed them one bit. Finally, the film blends staged and documentary elements in a way that does away with our fixed notion of genres. 'Import/Export' is blood, sweat and tears. The blizzard in the Ukraine, the bureaucracy at an Austrian hospital and the shame of its protagonists all testify to the film's struggle with the elements, whatever they may be. But that's exactly what gives it its extraordinary vehemence, which couldn't be achieved in any other way."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 22.05.2007

Verena Lueken writes in her Cannes column about Michael Winterbottom's film "A Mighty Heart." The film, produced by Brad Pitt, features Angelina Jolie as the wife of Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was kidnapped and beheaded by Islamists in 2002. Lueken expresses concern about the film's aesthetic, which is centred around original shooting locations. "What does it mean when feature films, shot a few years after events and made as authentically as possible, start taking over the role of historic eyewitnesses? What does it mean when we see Angelina Jolie and think, this is a documentary, and when we can no longer recognise where documentary ends and fiction begins?"

Frankfurter Rundschau 22.05.2007

Daniel Kothenschulte watchedRoman Polanski lose his cool at a press conference in Cannes. "There were 32 directors there Ã¢â¬â 'From A for Angelopoulos to Z for Zhang Yimou'- presenting their short films for the programme 'To Each Their Own Cinema' when Polanski yelled at the assembled journalists: 'You're all asking such inane questions!' And it's true: the questions really were very limited, although pretty standard for that line of journalism. (...) Roman Polanski responded quite pleasantly when asked why he doesn't appear in more films. But that's where he drew the line: 'It's the computer that's reduced you to this level', hefumed. 'You don't write anymore. You copy your articles from the Internet and then send that to your editors. I've had enough. Why don't we go and get some lunch?'"

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 22.05.2007

ArtistNeo Rauch is working on 14 new paintings for a small exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In an interview with Jordan Mejias he talks about his relationship to tradition and his artistic credo: "I don't want a square of canvas to glorify failure or to be void of meaning or to show the climax of excess. Instead I want to find a formula which enables us to master the incomprehensible and the terrible without succumbing to it. Painting wields power. I am trying to master the unruly things in this world." See our interview with the artist "Nothing can embarrass me anymore."

Die Welt 22.05.2007

Holger Kreitling commemorates the 100th birthday of George Remi, alias Herge. Kreitling may crown him "Europe's best comic artist" for "Tintin", but he makes it quite clear that Tintin is anything but a reporter. "We never see him write. Tintin just has adventures. His work trips never produce any results. Quick, quick, Tintin is always short of time, even if he always stays calm."

Die Tageszeitung 22.05.2007

Inspired by the example of Malian musicianBassekou Kouyate and his Munich producer Jay Rutledge of Outhere Records, Thomas Burkhalter tells just how difficult it is to bring the traditional Griot music onto the world market. "Rutledge had to pay HMV, the biggest British chain of CD shops, 500 British pounds just to have 'Segu Blue' visible in the world music section. And Amazon functions the same way. For a couple of hundred euros more, the Internet dealer sends an email praising the CD to everyone who's previously purchased Malian music. And then when British papers and magazines wanted to write about Kouyate, Rutledge had to fly his new star to London." In a related article, Natalie Wiesmann reports from the first edition of the "Creole" world music prize in Dortmund.

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more